I was lucky to be invited by my Social Media superstar and good friend Tonyo Cruz to have a first look on one of this year’s most anticipated smartphones to be released – the HTC One. This smartphone was announced during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last February and has gained a lot of interest from geeks and non-geeks alike.
For my first look, here are my impressions on this sexy beast:
1. Form-factor
I’ve said before that HTC has been coming up with great designs for their smartphones (previously, I’ve reviewed the HTC One X and the HTC Windows Phone 8X) and they have absolutely got me attracted with the form factor of the HTC One. It looks longer and slimmer than the One X, but after checking the specs, the HTC One is actually 0.4 mm thicker. The black color made it even more sexy and elegant that my eyes were locked on to it for the next 2 hours. Also noticeable is the aluminum body that seals its place as the newest flagship phone of HTC, and at the same time made some people criticize about Samsung’s choice of plastic.
2. HTC Sense
The HTC One is now powered by HTC Sense 5 and it looks very different from its previous versions in a good way. A lot of users nowadays use their smartphones to check on their feeds. With HTC’s BlinkFeed, you can customize the feeds on your homescreen whether you want to view the latest local and international news or your own timeline on Twitter. Here’s a video of how the HTC Sense 5 works as well as a quick view of the hardware.
3. Not Mega, ULTRA-Pixel Camera!
This is a feature that stands out compared to other smartphones in the market today so I took some photos with the HTC One’s Ultrapixel camera. It’s around past 8pm here at Commune Café so this is a good time for me to test the camera without using flash photography. Here are the results:
Another interesting feature is the HTC Zoe. With Zoe, you can take a short video and then choose the best scenes which you want to come out as the final photo. Also, Zoe was able to create a summary of the photo album like a music video. I can’t remember how I did it, but the outcome was cute!
4. HTC BoomSound
I played a few music tracks on the HTC One to test its sound quality. The HTC One comes with dual front speakers and built-in amplifiers as well as Beats Audio. One word to describe the experience: AWESOME! I cannot believe that I am listening to such superb audio quality from a smartphone.
So that rounds up my first impressions of the HTC One. I would love to find a way to have a review unit as such device deserves a thorough review. If I were to look for a new smartphone, it may be the One.
